


Strider Bros Feelings Jam

by waitineedaname



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergence, Feelings Jams, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'll give you three guesses as to what post canon thing it diverges from, Nightmares, POV Second Person, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Translation Available, me strangling the epilogues: DIRK IS A GOOD BROTHER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 19:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18763009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitineedaname/pseuds/waitineedaname
Summary: Your name is Dirk Strider, and after all the shit your brother's been through, you owe it to him to at least try to make things better in the future.





	Strider Bros Feelings Jam

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Strider Bros Feelings Jam](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19226929) by [tgvs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tgvs/pseuds/tgvs)



> so i started this like. way long ago almost immediately after I finished homestuck, but then I kind of abandoned it
> 
> AND THEN THE EPILOGUES HAPPENED..... Ultimate Dirk is an interesting character study, but in this house we only know a Dirk that actively tries to avoid becoming the dude who traumatized his brother
> 
> This is the first of probably several post-canon fics I'm gonna be writing to ignore the epilogues and ensure my kids' happiness, so keep an eye out!

TG: hey dude are you asleep

TG: what am i kidding youve never met a sleep schedule in your goddamn life 

TG: sleep? taking care of your body? who needs it when youre dirk strider and you run on a metric fuckton of caffeine and insomnia 

TG: time to work on some dumbass project that absolutely does not need to be as complicated as im making it until i inevitably pass the fuck out on top of a drill bit because im the prince of not being a functioning human being 

TG: living the dream 

TG: anyway are you awake or what 

TT: Yeah, I’m awake. 

TT: Those are some bold words coming from someone messaging me at approximately 2:00 in the morning. 

TG: hey i live in the troll kingdom man 

TG: everyone is nocturnal here 

TT: All the trolls might be. 

TT: Last I checked, I’m pretty sure you were human. 

TG: you dont know 

TG: maybe theyre rubbing off of me 

TG: some kind of species osmosis from hanging out with trolls all the time 

TG: i could be growing my own kickass candy corn horns right now for all you know 

TT: Pics or it didn’t happen. 

TG: goddammit 

TG: you really want me to bust out the photoshop right now because ill do it dont even test me 

TT: Nah. I’ll take your word for it. 

TT: You wanna tell me why you’re messaging me in the middle of the night? 

TG: oh 

TG: yeah 

TG: i 

TG: couldnt sleep 

TT: Ah. 

TT: Nightmare? 

TG: yeah 

TG: woke karkat up and freaked him the hell out which was hella fun while having a panic attack 

TG: he tried to help but 

TG: yknow 

TT: Yeah. I know. 

TG: anyway can i come over or 

TT: Sure, bro. It’s just me at the house right now. 

TG: cool be there in 5 

Your name is Dirk Strider, and you’re pretty sure you know why your brother had a panic attack. One look at his face when you opened the door to let him in, and your suspicions were all but confirmed. You’d gotten to know him pretty well in the past few years since you met, and you liked to think you had a good handle on his tells. That, or he was getting more expressive as he unlearned the stoicism forced on him by your older counterpart. You couldn’t blame him if that was the case.

Regardless, you kept your motions easy to follow and- not  _ slow _ , per se, but not particularly fast either. Flashstepping into the kitchen was probably the worst thing you could do right now, so you made sure your movement was predictable.

“Do you want something to drink? I’ve got…” You trailed off, examining the frankly dismal state of your fridge, “Water, orange juice, almond milk, Fanta… I have an extremely pretentious bottle of IPA and a cheap can of piss beer, which probably is all the proof you need to know that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with alcohol.”

Dave snorted and leaned against the counter next to you. “Just the water’s fine, man. Thanks.”

You poured a glass of water for both of you and grabbed a half-empty bag of Doritos, carrying your spoils to the kitchen table. You weren’t about to go into a feelings jam without feeding the dude. He sat down opposite you and took his glass of water, staring down into the cup like it was the abyss.

Frankly put, the dude looked like a wreck. His hair was disheveled, and it was pretty clear he’d just pulled on jeans and a hoodie and flown out the door. What little of his eyes you could see behind his shades told you they were red - or redder than usual, at least. Bloodshot.

You wanted to ask what the nightmare had been, even though you 1) would bet your life’s worth in bitcoin that you could guess who a key player was and 2) knew pushing him when he wasn’t ready to talk would get you nowhere. So you kept your mouth shut and opened up the Doritos to dig around for a chip that wasn’t crushed. Dave watched you search fruitlessly and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Dude, how much of that shit do you eat?”

“Enough for bofa.” You answered immediately and the quirk of his lip pulled into a real smile.

“Oh yeah? You sure you don’t also have a bag of sucon around here?” Touché. You were at an impasse. You’d taught him well. “Anyway, seriously, when’s the last time you ate something green?”

You crunched pensively on your half a Dorito and tried to remember the answer to that question. “There might have been salads present last time I visited Roxy.”

“Which was when?”

“...A week and a half ago maybe?”

“Jesus. You have the worst diet I’ve ever seen and my boyfriend eats  _ bugs _ . I’m pretty sure the only reason you survive is because Roxy occasionally wakes up in a sweat going ‘oh fuck Dirk’s destroying his body again’ and you have to get strapped down and force fed a piece of broccoli.”

“I don’t have to get  _ force  _ fed.” You protested. He gave you a look but didn’t say anything. The two of you fell into a silence not too different from the one you’d lapsed into when the two of you first met, before Dave started really talking. The main difference was now, you knew him well enough to know he was just sorting his thoughts, figuring out where exactly to start before everything started tumbling out of his mouth. So you didn’t rush him and continued to munch on your Doritos.

“...I ever tell you about how I didn’t really get to eat a whole lot growing up?” He finally broke the silence, and you froze in the middle of a bite. You slowly chewed and swallowed before nodding.

“I mean, not explicitly, but you’ve alluded to it, yeah.”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ sucked.” He wasn’t looking at you, eyes fixed on his glass of water as he dragged his finger up and down through the condensation. “I was always having to squirrel shit away, and I  _ know  _ he must’ve known I was doing it, he probably knew all my hiding places, but even that was probably part of his sick training or whatever the fuck. Preparing me for the end times when I’d have to store my food where it’s safe. Well joke’s on you, asshole, you just made me look like a fucking weirdo when I started hiding my food from everyone on the meteor.” 

You knew that bitter statement wasn’t directed at  _ you  _ specifically, but your gut still clenched with guilt anyway. That  _ was  _ you that did that to him, just the you of different circumstances, and no amount of Dave’s insistence that you weren’t the same would completely absolve you of guilt. You shoved those thoughts away for the next time the roles were reversed in a feelings jam and kept listening.

“It wasn’t like he never fed me.” Dave continued, everything coming out in a rush like it always did. “He’d come home with take-out sometimes and throw me some fried rice or something, and that was good. We might even eat together and watch a movie or something, and I could pretend things were normal for a few hours. But it just- It  _ wasn’t  _ the norm, you know? The norm was having to fight for my dinner and going hungry if I didn’t fight hard enough. It was sneaking shit from the concession stand at school and shoving it in the back of my closet for when the school lunch was my only meal. And I think about that shit and- and it’s sickening!” He was stammering now, words stumbling over themselves in his urgency. “Literally fucking sickening, like I’m going to throw up if I think about it too hard! And it’s  _ still  _ affecting me! Every time I catch myself pocketing a granola bar to hide in my room or scarfing down my food because who knows if it’s gonna get yanked away from me- it sucks! Who the fuck is gonna steal my food? Karkat? Jade?”

He seemed to finally hit the end of his word dump and fell silent again, catching his breath. You took that as your cue to talk.

“Have you talked about this with anyone else?” You asked carefully.

“Yeah, kind of. Karkat gets it the most. Trolls have their own-” He gestured vaguely with a twist of his wrist, “-weird shit with food. Apparently depended on their lusii or what they could hunt down themselves. Karkat’s lusus was kind of hit or miss too. Not to the same degree, but. He gets it better than  _ John _ would, at least. I just-” He let out a frustrated huff of breath and ran a hand through his hair, “-I don’t want to bother him with it, you know? Even if he’d get it, it’s just… it’s a lot to dump on a dude.”

“Yeah.” You said. Yeah, you got it. There was an implicit understanding that you were the only person he could really hash it  _ all  _ out with. If there was anyone who could even try to understand his Bro’s psyche while also being fully aware that he was a shithead, it was you. You were just glad that meant he trusted you enough to talk about it instead of running in the opposite direction and never speaking to you.

“Like the nightmare thing.” Dave continued, grimacing. “If I tell you about it, do you promise not to psychoanalyze me or anything?”

“Rose might sue me for infringing upon her brand if I did that.” You said, and that earned you a slight smile. 

“She probably would. She’s extremely litigious.” He took a sip of water and sat back. A silence stretched on again, but he finally broke it with a sigh. “It was on the rooftop because of course it was. That’s kind of the standard stage for this shit. I was on the receiving end of a beatdown and at first- at first, it kinda felt like a memory? He was kicking my ass just like he had a million times before. Nothing new. But- He would usually reach a point where’d stop. He’d try to avoid breaking major bones or leave any marks that would cause too many questions at school. But in this dream, he just… kept going. He knocked me down and just kept kicking and beating me, and he told me to get up, and I… I couldn’t. I couldn’t get up anymore. And he stepped away and… You know when there isn’t really reason to think something in a dream, but you just know it anyway and accept it as fact?”

You weren’t sure if he wanted a response, but you nodded anyway.

“So he stepped away, and everything around me changed. Suddenly everyone was there - Karkat, John, Rose, Jade, Roxy… hell, even you were there, which should’ve triggered some kind of cognitive dissonance, but nope. Everyone was there, and-” His voice hitched and sounded thick, “-they were all dead. Or dying, getting killed, whatever. Everybody was fucking dying and somehow I- I knew it was my fault.” His voice dropped to an almost inaudible level. “I wasn’t strong enough. I’d proved him right. I couldn’t protect them, and everything fell apart. I wasn’t- I wasn’t a hero.”

The silence that fell then was thick, and you were hesitant to slice it. It took a lot of deliberation to convince yourself to get up, your motions clear and unhurried because you knew even now- no,  _ especially  _ now, when he was shaky and forcing back tears, he was watching you out of the corner of his eyes, muscles tense and waiting for the shoe to drop, for you to turn on him and prove that this has been some elaborate ploy to strike when he’s at his lowest, for you to prove you were never any different from his Bro. You knew he didn’t think that, and you were doing your best not to believe it either, but there was no convincing a traumatized hindbrain. So you made sure he could see exactly where you were going and could move or stop you when you walked around the table to sit at his side. 

The two of you sat next to each other in silence. He cradled his forehead in his palm, and you put your hands on the table, picking at your cuticles.

“My Bro, the you from my universe, he…” You trailed off and started again. “You already know I idolized him, and I know that’s kind of weird. I mean, I have your web comic tattooed on my arm.” You shrugged the shoulder featuring your SBaHJ tattoo, and he snorted softly. “But it felt like… of course I idolized him. He was a hero. He led a revolution against a genocidal dictator. He sacrificed himself in the hopes that things might be better for someone down the line. He was the hero I wanted to be. But…”

You paused and took a deep breath. You could feel Dave’s undivided attention, but you didn’t look over at him, eyes trained on your chipped fingernails.

“He wasn’t perfect.” You finally spoke again. “He said some questionable shit in interviews sometimes, just talking without thinking. He did some stuff in the name of the revolution that completely flopped and hurt more people than it helped. And in the end, he didn’t win. He died, and the Condesce wiped out humanity. He  _ failed.  _ But he was still a hero. He still set the stage for me and Roxy. He still fought for the greater good. His failures don’t discount his successes.”

You finally looked at Dave and found his eyes to be piercing when you were this close. You could see them behind the shades and couldn’t help but pick out pieces of yourself and Roxy in them. His eyes were just like Roxy’s, round and expressive, but his eyebrows, thick and pinched together in focus - those were all yours.

“Believe me when I say you’re more accomplished than he ever was. You’re a hero, Dave. A true one. You saved  _ universes. _ Plural. You fought evil and won. You protected your friends when you could, you thought on your feet, and sacrificed yourself for the good of everyone else. I mean, dude, Rose told me about your suicide mission to the green sun. That’s pretty damn heroic. And even if you’re not perfect, that doesn’t matter. You’re  _ human.  _ You’re gonna miss shit sometimes, you’re gonna say or do the wrong thing, people might get hurt, and it’ll suck, but that’s part of being human, I think. Fucking up is a chronic part of the human condition, and we’re all just figuring out how to cope with it.”

Dave stared at you in silence for a minute after you finished, and you were beginning to think you might have fucked that up when he finally said “shit” and turned his face away from you. Panic settled itself in your core and you frantically tried to think of some way to fix it.

“Dave?” was all you managed to say before he turned back around and pulled you into a tight hug. You froze in his arms, then slowly wound your own around him. He was shaking and your shoulder was getting suspiciously wet where his face was pressed. You decided to stay silent in favor of rubbing his back slowly and letting himself get it all out of his system.

Eventually he managed to collect himself enough to pull away from the hug and sit back in his seat. “Ugh. Fuck. Sorry about that.” He warbled, wiping at his face under his shades.

“It’s cool. Don’t worry about it.” You said, and you meant it. You weren’t great with physical affection most of the time, but you could make an exception for your brother when he really needed it. “You want some more water?”

“Nah, I’m good.” He took a deep breath and downed the rest of his water. There was a long beat of silence as he tried to recover a semblance of normalcy and you felt increasingly awkward. Eventually, he spoke again, voice quiet. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” You said immediately. He started to protest, but you shook your head. “No, I’m serious. Don’t mention it. The less you mention it, the less I’ll look for ways I fucked up in this conversation somehow. Actually, I’ll do that regardless, but if we just both act like we’re cool, I can keep it under wraps.”

That made him snort, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t smiling a little bit too. “Okay, truce.” He conceded, already looking a little bit better despite the telltale tear streaks not even his dark skin could hide.

“Do you wanna try kicking my ass on Street Fighter?” You offered, jerking your head towards your TV. 

“Won’t be much trying involved, you know you suck at that game.” He said, an undeniable smile on his face. You stood and he followed you to the couch.

“Maybe I’ve been holding myself back. Don’t want to embarrass you, after all.” You handed him a controller and settled yourself on the couch.

“Man, you’re like physically incapable of doing anything other than the Most™.” You have no idea how he made the trademark symbol with his mouth, but you weren’t going to question it. “The day you half-ass anything is the day I eat my shades.”

“Prepare to get crunching, bro.” That made him laugh as you started up the game.

It had mostly been an empty threat to cheer him up; you really were shit at Street Fighter, but you at least gave him a run for his money. After a few rounds, the tension had almost entirely seeped out of the room and you could almost forget what had brought him here in the first place. After absolutely wrecking your shit for the eighth round in a row, Dave excused himself to go take a piss, and you took the opportunity to check your phone. You had a text from a certain someone’s gray boyfriend.

CG: STRIDER. 

TT: Vantas. 

CG: IS DAVE WITH YOU? 

CG: STUPID QUESTION. HE ALREADY TOLD ME HE WAS GOING TO YOUR PLACE. 

CG: I MEANT TO ASK IF HE’S OKAY. 

CG: HE WAS A WRECK WHEN HE LEFT EARLIER. 

TT: He’s as okay as he can be, all things considered. 

TT: He’s better than he was earlier, at least. 

CG: THANK FUCK. 

CG: CAN YOU TELL HIM TO GET HIS ASS HOME? 

CG: I’VE BEEN WORRYING MYSELF SICK ALL MORNING, AND I’M GETTING TIRED OF IT. 

CG: HE DOESN’T HAVE TO TELL ME WHY HE WAS UPSET, I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE HE’S OKAY. 

CG: IF YOU REPEAT THAT TO ANYONE I’LL EVISCERATE YOU AND EAT YOUR GROSS HUMAN INSIDES. 

TT: Threat acknowledged. I promise I won’t tell anyone you care about the boyfriend you openly adore. Your secret is safe with me. 

CG: SARCASM IS A TIRESOME FAMILIAL TRAIT, DOUCHEBAG. 

TT: Sorry. 

TT: I’ll let Dave know you’re asking for him. 

“Don’t get jealous,” You said when Dave walked back into the room, “But your boyfriend is texting me.”

“God dammit, Karkat.” Dave shook his head and took your proffered phone to read the exchange. He seemed entirely unaware of the fond look on his face as he read the texts, and when he handed your phone back, the heart emoji tacked on to the end of his response of “yo this is dave im heading back now” did not escape your notice. 

“Guess that’s my cue to get going.” Dave said, and you stood up to walk him to the door. Before you could say your goodbye, he pulled you into another tight hug. “Thanks, bro.” He mumbled into your shoulder. You were pretty sure the “b” was lowercase.

“Any time, little man.” You murmured back, the nickname something of a joke; he’d profited from a slightly improved diet around the time he hit puberty, and you’d spent nearly sixteen years subsisting off of fish and food that had been preserved for centuries. Needless to say, he had a few inches of height over you. Something about what you said made him squeeze you a little tighter before letting go. 

“I better go before Karkat throws more of a fit than he already is. Promise me you’ll eat a vegetable soon?” He said, already half out the door.

“Dude, don’t try to make a liar out of me.”

“Yo, I’m serious. Don’t make me sic Roxy on you.”

“I’ll buy some carrots, how about that? Gotta fit the orange brand.” 

“You’re so fucking dumb.” Dave laughed, waving over his shoulder at you before disappearing down the hall. 

You went back into the kitchen and, after a moment of hesitation, started a grocery list with salad greens at the top before finally heading to bed. Might as well do the bare minimum to take care of yourself; you owed Dave that much.

**Author's Note:**

> dear god that formatting was hell
> 
> come talk to me on tumblr @waitineedaname !! I'm full of Big Feelings


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